Wrist-mounted Sensor Enables Touchless Multi-touch

Microsoft unwittingly kicked off a revolution in multi-touch and 3D tracking when it released the Kinect. It seems the company is still innovating on those fronts, as it has teamed up with researchers from Newcastle University to create a wrist-mounted sensor that tracks the wearer’s hand movements.

The researchers call their gadget Digits. Despite being made of off the shelf parts, the end product’s potential is limitless. Unlike the Kinect, Digits is self-contained and lightweight, which means it’s very portable. The wearer doesn’t have to worry about staying in the line of sight of a stationary sensor; he can even make gestures while his hand is in his pocket. Second, the researchers deliberately chose to make it wrist-mounted as opposed to making a glove in order to be less intrusive. Finally the researchers came up with an intelligent signal processing pipeline that accurately interprets gestures despite tracking only five points on the wearer’s hand.